


The Matchmaker Mission

by ddagent



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Speed Dating, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 22:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7776583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ddagent/pseuds/ddagent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil and Melinda go undercover at a speed dating event. Part of the 'Philinda Undercover Challenge'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Matchmaker Mission

**Author's Note:**

> Originally my day was supposed to be the 'Dive Mission', but I couldn't come up with anything exciting. So, in its place, we have The Matchmaker Mission! I hope you enjoy it. Thanks to suallenparker for her help!

“Hi, my name is _Paul._ I teach history at the local college. _Divorced._ One kid; a daughter. I guess I’m here for the same reason everyone else is: I’m looking for the _one._ ”

 _Although,_ Agent Phil Coulson mused as he lifted his wine glass to his lips, _perhaps not everyone was looking for someone who was murdering Inhumans._ The woman sitting across from him bobbed her head intently, her smile wide and welcoming as if she thought that Paul might be _her_ one. He was a nice alias; one of his favourites. History professor at the local college, regular attendee of the Smithsonian. Divorced, but amicably. A teenage daughter who loved her daddy. Phil figured Paul would be the man he _could_ have been had he chosen a life other than SHIELD.

But he _had_ chosen SHIELD, which was why he was at a speed dating event on a Friday night looking for a killer stalking Inhumans instead of out on a date like a regular guy.

His date for the next three and a half minutes – Susan – reached over and touched his hand. “I can tell from your eyes that you’re a good father.”

“I try. It’s not always easy. My ex-wife tends to spoil her; I have to be the bad guy. ‘You can’t go to that concert’; ‘you can’t wear _that_ to school’.” Phil returned the squeeze to her hand. Over the years he’d become a master at faking human connection. “So, Susan, tell me about yourself. What do you like to do in your spare time?”

Phil felt himself inwardly screaming at the cheesy questions he was reduced to. But they had all been designed to get an idea of the person in front of them, and to match it with what they knew of their killer. Which wasn’t much.

As  Susan talked about her vegetable garden and the small crafts club she ran at her son’s elementary school, Phil felt his gaze shift across the room to another set of tables. The man, wearing a red silk shirt and an obnoxious amount of hair gel, was pushed forward over the table so he was barely inches away from his ‘date’. Even across the room, Phil could conjure up the smell of this man’s cologne. How his date was able to stomach it, Phil had no idea. He hadn’t yet had a chance to talk to the striking brunette. Dark eyes, lithe body. Yoga instructor, he thought he’d heard her say. Her mouth was curled into a beckoning smile. Her eyes were screaming murder.

_“May, I know it’s hard, but try not to kill this guy, okay?”_

Phil smirked at the sound of Mack’s voice in his ear. Melinda hated undercover at the best of times. But a speed dating event? That was her idea of hell. “So what about you, Paul?”

“Hmm?” Phil blinked, fixing his attention back on his ‘date’. “Oh, what do _I_ like to do? _Museums_. I have membership cards to all the museums. I make a regular pilgrimage every year to the Smithsonian to see the new exhibits. I went twice to see the _Captain America_ one.”

Susan pursed her lips. “I’m surprised they haven’t torn that exhibit out. What with Captain America being a terrorist and all.”

 _“Guess it’s not true love after all.”_ Phil could hear Mack’s smirk over the comms. “ _Okay, the bell is coming up in about five seconds. Write your thoughts on the little comment cards, Elena will come and collect them.”_

Just as Mack predicted, the bell rang out. Their speed date was over. Two hundred and forty seconds to get to know someone wasn’t that long at all. The first four minutes Mack had met Elena, for instance, wouldn’t have led to a future of them dating. But Phil had caught them smiling at each other on the way over; a brush of Mack’s hand on her back as she left for the mission. He was worried about her. Maybe he should be. As Phil scribbled down a few thoughts about Susan, he realised they were no closer to unveiling their killer.

Phil passed Elena the card. Her hair was pulled back, and she looked particularly uncomfortable in her skirt and blouse. “How you holding up?” he whispered.

She shrugged. “People are watching me. I can’t tell what their intentions are.”

Elena put his card to the back of the stack, where along with Melinda’s it would be scanned into the system. Anyone acting remotely suspicious would be flagged. Piper was waiting in the van outside in case things got bad. Phil hoped it wouldn’t come to that. There were lots of civilians here. The last thing he wanted was a public incident.

After Elena made the rounds, the hostess of the event stood at the front of the assembled crowd. She ran the matchmaking service _The Power of Love,_ and both Phil and Melinda had had a two hour interview with her to set up their profiles. She offered one on one dates, or speed dating events like this. All their victims had opted for speed dating, so Phil and Melinda had done the same. Fitz had spent an entire afternoon looking into her history and found nothing out of the ordinary. She just seemed like a bright, happy woman who wanted to bring people together.

As expected, Melinda didn’t trust her.  

“Okay, we’re going to take a little break here, so if you’d like to refresh your drink or your make up, you have ten minutes!”

As if her words were a starter’s pistol, the assembled group of twenty four men and women immediately stood up from their seats and headed in one of three directions: the bar, the bathroom, or the alley out back for a smoke break. On their last ten minute break, Phil had followed a guy Melinda had flagged as suspicious. The only thing he was guilty of was attending a speed dating event whilst his girlfriend was waiting back at home. This time, Phil opted for the bar.

“Another glass of white, please,” Phil said to the bartender, leaving his empty glass on the bar. He watched as Susan headed for the bathroom with her friend for the evening, glancing in his direction with a smile. She seemed to like him. Shame.

Someone pushed into the space beside him, a little too close for Phil’s comfort. But as he looked in the mirror above the bar, Phil realised it was only Melinda. She looked almost alien in her undercover outfit: tight jeans, heels, and a low cut top that held the attention of most men. At the safe house before the op, Melinda had been cursing in Mandarin at the heels she was forced to wear. Now she walked like she was born in them. Cherry red lips smiled at the bartender, calling him over as she asked for another cocktail.

“Thank you, handsome.” She even accompanied it with a wink. “Enjoying yourself?

Phil didn’t address Melinda directly, just stared into the mirror above the bar. “About as much as you are.”

A snort. “You’re not wearing the thong I am.”

He choked, white wine spluttering back into his glass. On the comms, he could hear Mack do the same. Phil vaguely heard the sound of Elena sniggering, accompanied by Melinda’s smirk. Phil coughed, once, before controlling himself with a small sip of wine. “Any new suspects?”

“No. Just another four assholes who keep staring down my shirt.”

“What’s your alias again?”

Melinda swallowed half her cocktail, wincing at the taste. She preferred hard liquor, not alcohol flavoured sugar accompanied with whipped cream and a cherry on top. But her alias loved them. “Sarah. Yoga instructor, divorced twice. No kids, goes travelling twice a year to different exotic locations. Cocktails, beaches, and buff pool boys.”

“ _Buff pool boys?”_

“Talk to Simmons. She wrote the cover.”

Knowing Simmons, she had an intricate list of all the pool boys Sarah had ever had a dalliance with. She was intense, but dedicated, to creating undercover personas. Phil couldn’t help but smile as he remembered a train in the Italian countryside; a mission that felt like a _lifetime_ ago. He certainly never thought he’d end up here. Back in the field with Melinda May, working side by side. Sometimes he thought it a step back. Director to Agent. Sometimes there was no place he would rather be.

“ _You guys still with me?”_

Phil took a sip of his drink. “Still here, Mack.”

“ _Good. Piper’s got something in the alley; she’s going to check it out.”_

Melinda bristled beside him. Despite every intention to keep the young woman at arm’s length, Piper had wound up being Melinda’s right hand. She might not show it, but Phil _knew_ that Melinda was worried about losing her. Just like she lost Daisy. “Does she need back up?”

“ _She’s fine. It’s probably nothing. You two need to stay put; don’t draw any unnecessary attention to yourselves. Maybe even see if you could find a date.”_

This time it was him who snorted. “Unlikely.”

_“Wouldn’t kill either of you to meet someone. It’s been a while. For both of you.”_

For the first time that evening, Phil and Melinda exchanged a direct look. They quickly shifted back to their respective drinks, but Mack’s words still hung heavy in the air. It was nearly a year since Rosalind had been murdered right in front of him. Close to ten months since Andrew had given his life for Daisy. In that time, neither of them had dated. He hadn’t even _thought_ about dating. This certainly wasn’t the place for it. After all, how could anyone have a relationship with a man who was legally dead?

Before he could continue that line of thought, their hostess stepped back into the light. “To your tables, please!”

Beside him, Melinda swallowed the rest of her cocktail. He wanted to reach out, brush her hand with his, try and reassure her. He couldn’t imagine how hard it was to try and keep her cover whilst straining to listen for any news about Piper. But he kept his hands to himself, wrapping them around his third wine glass for the evening as he headed back to his table. He sat down, waiting for another woman to be seated in front of him. Phil risked one final glance over to Melinda; her eyes glassy as her mind focussed elsewhere. But as soon as her ‘date’ took the seat in front of her, she snapped back to attention. _Always a professional._

“You look a million miles away.”

Phil smiled at the new woman sitting in front of him. She was well dressed, perhaps a little stiff. Her fingers kept paying attention to the ring on her left hand. The band circled her finger once, twice, before Phil responded. “I could say the same about you.”

She laughed. “My friend forced me here. She thinks it’s time I _move on._ I disagree.” She took a sip from the glass of mineral water by her elbow. “So, I’ve been on eight dates tonight. I’ve heard the same old stories, the same old lines. One guy actually read off cue cards.”

“Everyone has a script they’re reading from.” Over the evening, Phil had realised he wasn’t the only one running a cover. Maybe it was slightly more make up to cover the blemishes. Maybe it was a slightly more expensive shirt to cover the unemployment cheques in their pocket. Four minutes wasn’t long to make a good impression. You had to be the best version of yourself. “So let’s go off script. Ask me anything.”

“Okay.” Another sip of her water. “Tell me about the first girl that broke your heart.”

Phil stared, eyes wide. “Seriously?”

“Absolutely. Off script, remember?”

There were two paragraphs in Simmons’ undercover dossier about the first girl who had ever broken Paul’s heart. He’d skimmed that section, so sure that he wouldn’t need it at a speed dating event. So Phil decided to go off script himself. He told the truth. “We were best friends. She fell in love with someone else.”

Her eyes widened. She hadn’t been expecting that. “That must have hurt.”

He shrugged. “It did. And it didn’t. I was happy that she was happy. But there was always a part of me that still hoped that it might all work out. That one day we’d look at each other and think _god, I love you so much, why are we not together?_ ”

Her blue eyes held his across the table, her body leaning forward eagerly. “Is she still with the guy?”

“No. They divorced.”

“Do you still see her?”

Phil resisted the urge to glance across the room to where Melinda sat on her own speed date. “Occasionally. We work in the same field.”

“So if she’s not with this guy any more, what’s holding you back? Why don’t you go up to her and say that speech I know you’ve prepared?”

He chuckled. _The speech._ He’d written it at the Academy, ran over it in his head countless times. It got longer every year. Every new condition, every new barrier and boundary they had got challenged in that speech. It was so long now it was almost a lecture. “I’m not sure she wants to hear it.”

Phil took a sip of his wine, resting the glass against his bottom lip. He took the moment to look at the clock ticking down, realising the bell would go off very soon. He put down the glass immediately and got to work: _always the professional._ “Okay, your turn. When was the last time you got so… _angry_ that you wanted to scream, trash everything. Hurt the world back?”

“Four years ago my fiancé died.” She ducked her eyes, lest he see them prick with tears. “It was during the alien invasion of New York City. He was on a business trip, wasn’t even supposed to be there but his asshole partner called in sick. I didn’t even have a body to bury. That organisation – SHIELD – they cleaned it all up and there was never an investigation. And a few months ago, who did I see on the TV? _SHIELD._ Hiding aliens again. Hiding the truth again. Like New York didn’t even happen.”

She squeezed the bridge of her nose. Phil reached across the table, brushing her hand with his. “I can’t imagine how much pain you’re feeling. You lost someone you loved, and they didn’t give you any answers.”

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed harshly. “Not a single one. And these aliens, these _Inhumans,_ they get to live their lives. They get to come to places like this and fall in love and the love of my life is nothing more than fucking _ash._ ” She sucked in a breath. “God, I’m so sorry. That’s not what you wanted to hear at all, is it?”

“I think it is.”

The bell went off, signalling the end of the date. The woman, Phil never got her name, stood up immediately and headed for the bathroom. Phil followed her with his eyes. “I think we’ve found her.”

“ _I think you’re right. Erica Matthews, fiancé died in New York. Checking her records now…she was supposed to go to the last four speed dating events our victims went to, but never turned up. But her friend Charlie did. Charlie whose last boyfriend has ties to the Watchdogs. I’m putting Piper and Elena on it now.”_

“Good work, Mack.”

Over comms, Phil heard Elena and Piper stop Erica by the bathrooms. She tried to run as soon as Piper identified herself, but she didn’t get very far. She was a great agent; her skills had only improved under May. From two tables down, Phil could see Melinda smile. _Pride._

With their killer caught, they could relax. Phil took a sip of his wine and concentrated on finishing out their cover. After recycling the same old lines for his next two dates, Phil finally had his last connection of the evening.

_Melinda._

She offered him a warm smile as she sat down, body immediately hunching over the table to shorten the distance between them. Phil had a great view of her cleavage, and Melinda knew it. Her cherry red lips were warm, inviting. The cocktail glass had lipstick around the rim. She plucked a cherry from the top and slid it between her plump lips. It was all an act; a good one. _Very good one._

“I’m Sarah.”

“Paul.”

“You enjoy sex, Paul?” Sarah had enjoyed one too many cocktails that evening, judging by the slight slur to her speech and the foot slowly making its way up his leg. Phil shivered, trying not to enjoy it as much as he was. “You’re my last date tonight. _Best for last._ ”

Phil swallowed as Melinda’s foot made contact with his crotch. The sensation of Melinda’s bare toes rubbing against the front seam of his pants made Phil jerk, his hand knocking his wine glass across the table. “Shit.”

“Let me help you.” Melinda pushed forward, dabbing at the wine with a napkin. “ _Turn off your comms._ ”

_“What?”_

“You heard.” Melinda’s hand lingered against her ear, and Phil heard the tell-tale sign of her comms being deactivated. He followed suit. When they were both sitting, Melinda spoke again: “Good. Now we can talk.”

Phil’s brow furrowed as he looked across the table at his partner. Something stabbed in his gut, and Phil had the horrifying thought that Melinda wanted to discuss what he’d told Erica. “Is everything okay?”

Melinda twisted her head, staring at the clock behind them. “You’ve got two minutes, Phil. I want to hear that speech.”

He stared across the table at his partner. For so many of their years as friends, partners, they’d always kept things profession. But things had begun to change over the last few months. Drinks after work, the occasional dinner. He’d sleep on her couch, not wanting to return to the Playground. Smiles and looks and touches. As Melinda gently brushed her fingers against the back of his hand, the final boundary between them came crashing down.

“We should be together. Everything keeps changing. SHIELD keeps changing. But the constant thing in my life is you. How I feel has never changed, not once. So… _we should be together._ ”

Melinda smiled softly across from him. “That took you thirty years?”

He shrugged. “You know me – I’m a perfectionist.”

“You are.” Melinda’s touch was bolder this time. Their hands joined; the pads of her fingertips resting on the inside of his wrist. “I think it’s about time we went on a real date.”

Before Phil could respond, the buzzer sounded. Melinda immediately pulled away, scribbling something on her comment card and leaving it behind with nothing more than a flirty wink. She got to her feet, wobbling in her high heels, before making a beeline to the bar. She might loathe it, but Phil had always envied her undercover talents. As he watched her walk away, Phil switched on comms, wanting to hear an update on the mission.

“ _…they think I don’t know, but I do. Hunter and Bobbi, Fitz and Simmons…turning off your comms, that’s subtle.”_

“Everything okay, Mack?” Phil asked as he got to his feet.

“ _Everything’s fine. Mission’s a success, Elena didn’t get killed, May didn’t stab a guy with a fork. How about you?”_

Phil slipped on his jacket, smiling across the room at Melinda before heading for the exit. In his hand was the blank comment card he was supposed to fill in to help with his matches. He ripped it up and threw it in a bin outside. “I’m leaving with a date.”  


End file.
